How to Market Your Practice With Your Website Part1

Are you still questioning if you really need to market your health care practice?

If you answered “Yes”, let me simply say this…You need to market!

No matter how busy you are; no matter how busy your practice is today.

If you are in business, any type of business, you need to market your business, products or services. Period. End of story!

And today even you, a healthcare provider, has to market.

It’s no secret, our world is changing. It’s driven by the internet, easy access to information, and ever-changing advances in technology.

People today have more choices than they ever had before. The majority of patients search online to find a clinic and help them decide which provider they want to work with.

Less and less people turn to the yellow pages or open the paper when searching for a new provider. And soon these methods will be a thing of the past altogether.

The Internet Gives Us Choices … Lots Of Choices!

Consumers today check out businesses and healthcare providers alike before they do business with them. They expect businesses to adapt to new technologies.

At the minimum they want to see that your practice has a website and that they can get information about you from your site before they come in to see you.

Unfortunately, most practices still believe that as professionals they don’t have to market. And if they do, they often rely on outdated concepts and methods to implement their marketing

However, there is a growing number of smart practice owners. They realize that they, just like any business, have to market today.

These practice owners are getting up to speed and tap into new methods of marketing. This allows them to interact with current patients and attract new patients into their practices.

Patients today know that they have a choice when it comes to their healthcare and they act accordingly. They check rating, insurance, and social media sites to get information about you. And of course, they check out your website to determine if you and your office might be a good fit for them.

Don’t forget, people work with whom they know, like, and trust…

What Is Your Message?

Does your website convey a message of trust to potential patients? Or does it leave prospective patients with more unanswered questions than they brought with them when visiting your site?

Your practice website can be an amazing tool. It is an opportunity to tell site visitors what you want them to know about you and your office.

Additionally, people can get their questions answered without you or your staff having to be there or answer the phone. This frees up your staff to tend to other tasks.

Today, more than ever, you must be in front of people when they are ready to get information or make a decision about you and the services you provide.

A well designed and well-written website is the medium that allows you to do just that. And putting your website to work for you 24/7 is not as complicated as it may seem.

So here is what to do next…

Put your website to the test now. Image visiting your own site for the first time and answer these questions:

What is your first impression of your site?

Is there enough visual interest to stay on the site?

Do you instantly know what the site is about?

Do you feel you could trust the people behind the site with your healthcare?

How easy is it to find the information you’re looking for?

Are the navigation links descriptive enough?

Do you have to click on multiple links before you find the right information

Are your questions fully answered?

Are basic questions, common to most visitors, addressed? Here are some examples:

Who is the provider/s at the clinic?

Where are you located?

What is the contact information?

What are the clinic hours?

What services are available?

What insurances are accepted?

How did your website do?

Was it easy to find the information you were looking for?

Did it answer all of your questions?

And perhaps most importantly…

Did it leave you thinking: “Yes, this is a good fit for me”?

Your Turn!

Why not leave a comment below to let us the outcome of your “site check”?

By Johanna Hofmann, MBA, author of “Smart Business Planning for Clinicians” and regular contributor to the NPBusiness blog.

Comments 11

it’s difficult to give a set dollar figure here; there are many variables to be taken into consideration.
It all depends on:
how much clarity you have on what you want/need
what type of site you want and how much customization is required.
how much work you want to do yourself or if everything needs to be done by 3rd party

I’ll be talking about this very topic in Part 2 of our series “How to Market your Practice with your Website”, which will be released next Sunday.

Social media now is also another great way to reach out to an audience! Along with that you can do cross-promote between social media and your site. But in your opinion, is using a free platform advisable or do I really have to go for a paid one?

Milca godaddy is just one of many sites to choose from; at this time they are running a special on business and personal websites. I just purchased personal website but in a medical website format for 1 dollar a month and you pay upfront. So 13.11 with taxes and you get a free domain for 1 year. Hosting and other things are included. After 1 year it will be 6 dollars a month or so to maintain that site and you can secure your domain for however long you want for a fee. Yola offers a free website and sub domain but not sure how a sub domain works. Looking forward to reading Part 2.

Great post!
Online presence should now be considered a compulsory requirement for every business (not only healthcare) because most people usually use the WWW to find solutions. Although businesses without websites can still get clients(patients), the future might be more challenging especially when there will be more online solutions.

I built my site and pay $60/month. It was custom for what I wanted and included e-mail. However, for the services they are providing (rather not providing); I can get the same amount of “hits” with a free monthly carrier. I am going to switch to Weebly. Then get free e-mail with yahoo or gmail. If I was just starting I would go with an inexpensive alternative. I firmly believe that having a website does help the practice.

We often start with what we see, but as we become more knowledgeable, we find out we can do better. I’m not sure what you are paying for at $60/month. That’s much more than you should be paying for hosting and email.

You can definitely get an account at Weebly. However, I’d recommend that you get your own domain name (which you likely have) and forward it to the Weebly site. You domain name may or may not come with a professional email address. You can also get google apps (mail) and still use your domain (ie – yourname@practice.com).